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Phase Change Materials - BioPCM and ENRG Blanket

I'm exploring the use of phase change material for a project. Specifically, looking at the BioPCM/ENRG Blanket product. I see on their website that ZGF used it at University of Washington. I'd love to hear any feedback from folks who have used it, and more specifically how your energy model and MEP engineer accounted for it. Thanks!! https://phasechange.com/biopcm/

-Kristian Kicinski, Bassetti Architects
 

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Wed, 06/16/2021 - 01:32

Kristian – Sorry for the delay in responding – was hoping to get more feedback on the MEP/modeling side, but I’ll you what I know. 1. We’ve used it on a few projects – most notably UW Molecular Engineering and the RMI Innovation Center. IMO, it really makes sense, like in these 2 projects, if you’re trying to eliminate cooling and maintain thermal comfort, using it like thermal mass. I haven’t looked closely at it on an energy savings side. 2. In both buildings, we used essentially as interior “thermal mass”, both behind gyp board in the private offices and in the ceiling cloud/slatted ceiling of the open office. At RMI, we also used in the light shelf, thinking it would help with cooling and also moderate the passive solar. 3. We also did a POE study of the PCM install at UW, and confirmed its working as advertised (phase change around 75F, flat-lining the temperature wall and improving the radiant field for occupants) At UW, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t explicitly modeled. the energy performance wasn’t critical, the offices were a small part of the energy use of the research lab, and cooling a very small slide of that. On comfort, we have thermal mass and other unique, synergistic aspects where AEI wasn’t too worried about maintaining thermal comfort (POE surveys proved this out). At RMI, we used the operative temperature based on radiant fields (as well as other factors) for calculating comfort, and this may have been an input like thermal mass, but not sure on the details/process. -C Chris Flint Chatto AIA, LEED AP BD+C Principal ZGF ARCHITECTS LLP T 503.863.2324 E chris.chatto@zgf.com 1223 SW Washington Street, Suite 200 Portland, OR 97205 From: Kristian Kicinski <

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